Free The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) by Rosemary Kirstein

replied, invisible in the dark. “That’s the beauty of it.”
     
     

 
    6
     
    T he steerswoman leaned back in the sunshine. “I’m hiding from the conclave of gossips,” she said.
    Brilliant light poured down from the sky, as clean and fresh as new wine. Rowan sat, arms around her knees, leaning up against the aft railing of a small sailboat, which was tethered to a broken piling at the more ramshackle end of the harbor. The ship itself was tidy, but showed years, perhaps decades, of general neglect. The steerswoman decided that her sense of seamanship ought to be affronted, but the day was too fine, too bright and cheery to allow any such feeling to last.
    Janus was on hands and knees with a crowbar, prying up one of three deck planks that had worn from sheer age into hazardous nests of splinters. Their replacements stood nearby, good new oak, not yet stained.
    Out in the daylight, the previous night’s conversation seemed an unpleasant dream, of the dark and murky sort that were the most disturbing, and the most easily dispersed by sunshine and sea air.
    Janus laughed, the old bright laugh, now framed strangely by the gray-peppered beard. His skin, naturally brown, had been darkened near black by sunlight, and he wore a threadbare but clean muslin shirt of bright yellow, green canvas trousers, and gray gloves. Rowan considered the overall effect pleasantly decorative. “ ‘Conclave of gossips,’ ” he said. “That’s a good term.” A nail squealed protest as his prying lifted one plank edge. “They used to have something similar in the town where I grew up, and I always thought it was the most miserable, mundane way of passing time imaginable. Now, I actually enjoy it. Especially in winter, with a fire, and the wind rattling in the dark outside.” The image was near enough to one he had mentioned the previous night that Rowan felt a quick, small shiver that vanished immediately. Janus seemed not to notice. “There are some very good people in this town, Rowan,” he went on. A final tug delivered the plank into his gloved hands. “You just have to learn to appreciate them.” He set it noisily aside and began on the next.
    Rowan made no attempt to assist him, feeling even more smugly lazy by contrast. “Quite possibly. But I’m afraid I can’t yet face the interrogation that will certainly come after our little public scene at Brewer’s. They’re all agog, I’m sure.”
    “No doubt. But unless you leave town immediately, you’ll have to find some way to deal with them.”
    She closed her eyes and tilted her face up to the wonderful light. “I’m strategizing,” she said.
    “So I see.” She heard the second plank surrender. “And what do you— ” He caught himself. “I mean to say, how— damn.” She opened her eyes to find him scowling to himself. “This,” he said, “is not the most natural way of carrying on a conversation. I need to get used to talking without asking a single question. Perhaps I should practice in front of a mirror. But first I’ll need to buy a mirror . . .”
    “I suppose that you’ve gotten out of practice since Mira died. Or did you not associate with her at all?”
    A glance away, a glance back; and he was suddenly giving the problem of the third plank far more concentration than it might reasonably warrant. The steerswoman said cautiously, “What?”
    He sighed, stopped working, settled back to sit. “Actually, we associated quite a bit. I was a regular member of the conclave. However,” and he winced, “I neglected to mention to her that I was under the Steerswomen’s ban.” He had, at least, the grace to look ashamed.
    “Surely she must have known.” Even though word of a person being placed under ban by a traveling steerswoman might take a year or more to make its way back to the Archives, and longer still to double back out to the other steerswomen on the road, eventually the news did manage to become general. And any steerswoman at a